If Jesus is God, then who on earth was he praying to?

🔥The question: “Was Jesus just talking to himself?”

🛡️The Church's answer: The Son is the same one God as the Father, yet he is not the same person as the Father. The prayer of Jesus was not one person switching roles and talking to himself; it was the eternal Son's relationship of love with the Father showing itself inside a human life. The Son, having become human, really prayed with a human heart, human words, and a human will. With us and for us, he thanked the Father, asked of him, and entrusted himself to him.

The prayer in Gethsemane — “let this cup pass me by” — was not an act pretending that the cross didn't hurt. Jesus really went through human fear in the face of death, and still obeyed the Father's saving will with a free human will. The human will and the divine will in Christ are not the wills of two persons at war; in the one Son they work together without conflict.

🧐If they press further: “He said on the cross, ‘why have you abandoned me?’ — doesn't that mean he was cut off from the Father?” — praying the words of Psalm 22, Jesus really carried even the place of the human being who cries out that he has been abandoned in sin and pain. But the Father did not hate the Son and break the unity of the Trinity. The Son stood in solidarity with us sinners and, still one in love with the Father, entrusted himself to him.

✨In one sentence: “The prayer of Jesus isn't a monologue. It's the prayer that the Son, distinct from the Father, offered to the Father as a true human being, with us and for us.”